


if you're still breathing, you're the lucky ones

by damnmechanics (emmamanic)



Series: Song fics [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Badass Ladies, But it's all just spoken of, Clarke-centric, Emotional Hurt, Emotional strength, F/M, Freeform, Future Fic, Romance, So there's technically character death, Songfic, Time Passing, Youth by Daughter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-05
Updated: 2014-12-05
Packaged: 2018-02-28 05:46:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2721002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmamanic/pseuds/damnmechanics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'cause most of us are heaving through corrupted lungs (we are the restless; we are the wild youth)</p><p> </p><p>songfic challenge- youth, daughter</p>
            </blockquote>





	if you're still breathing, you're the lucky ones

Clarke doesn’t cry anymore.

Then again, she doesn’t laugh, either. Her soul has been wrung of even the last speck of emotion. There’s nothing left.

She has been on Earth for a year. Well, a year and twelve days, if she had been counting, if anyone had been counting. She wishes she had been counting, that someone had, now, because then she would know exactly how long her lungs have been breathing this corrupted air and her heart has given up on it’s palpitations.

Clarke likes to count her moments in heartbeats, her minutes in deep breaths, but she keeps her seconds in seconds. It seems like it has only been a second since her eyes opened wide at the sight of all that green, the fumes of the molten blasts, the permeating stench of rust and soap. She remembers how clean she was then. Clean, alive.

If she had been counting, she would also know that it had been ten months since Finn had died and six since her mother had. She would know it had been five months since Raven had gotten her leg back and Octavia had left four and a half ago. She would know it had been four months since the first sweat-soaked night, that three months ago she became chancellor, that five weeks ago she lost her first war. Three weeks since she’d had moonshine, and two since Bellamy had run. 

That one breaks her heart more than the rest. Because he hadn’t been lost to reapers, or sickness, or to life — this one, she begs — he had just been lost.

She lost him.

It’s been two weeks since she’d woken up alone, a week and a half since she’s stopped sleeping in her own bed, a week since she’s lost hope. Four days since she found out a grounder had visited the night before the disappearance and two since she’d gone out looking, alone, without a group, in danger but not really, and she cannot believe how broken she is. Clarke thought nothing could break her, nothing would, but she also thought she knew that Bellamy would never run, and if he did, he would always be back and have good reason. She knew this. She knew him, sometimes better than herself.

And yet he isn’t back, so maybe she didn’t know him at all, and that means that she doesn’t know herself and that terrifies her.

Clarke wakes up early every morning. She always did, but now she watches the sunrise. Now she feels. Now she volunteers for watch. Now she drinks with Raven, talks with Monty, sits bitterly alone besides graves. Now she is less. And she cannot be less.

And slowly, time passes. It is three weeks later, she moves his cot. It is six weeks, she mourns him. It is eight, she gives up entirely. It is ten and she has almost become normal again, her teenaged years grinding away because she has not really been a teenager for a long, long time. She trades, she laughs, and she leads, because that is what a leader does. This is what Clarke Griffin does.

And then he comes back.

And it is a year later and she does not hug him. She does not run, she is stony, and still. She holds her head high and does not weep when he tells her that Octavia is gone and so is he. She does not weep, and does not say a word when she sees the defeat on all of the edges on him, and she knows that this is why he was not back and it makes sense, it all makes sense and the truth is horrible yet she cannot find it within herself to weep. She has wasted all of her tears.

And she does not cry when she grabs Bellamy by the lips and pulls him in because she has forgotten what missing someone feels like. And he does not cry when they are wrapped up for hours together and Clarke can not believe how lucky she is because he is back, he is back, and she thought that no one would ever come back and here he is. And he tells her everything that happened, how the grounder came the first night and told him of Octavia’s condition and she can not imagine, because not only has he lost Octavia, but a brother and a nephew, and then he cries and Clarke lets him, and tells him that it just means he is not hollow and he promises that he will take her to the village he has left, that he is someone there, and she tells him that she is someone here, and so he does the impossible.

He leaves again.

Because he is full of guilt and this place as healed him, this place beyond the trees that he promises he will take her to, promises told under thin blankets against skin, promises that hold no weight. He leaves, and she lets him go, because she has a job to do and so does he but it still hurts. It hurts like hell.

But time stops for no woman and she can sleep at night, now, because at least she knows that he is safe, just on his own side of the mountain. Now he has a communications device, and they talk between breaks, at night, late. They talk, because that is all they have left. They talk, because they do not have each other. Clarke, queen, and Bellamy, knight, but of different nations. And it is okay. And she is okay. And it is five years before she sees him again, in a hail of fire. Peace had erupted between Grounders and Skypeople, but peace can only last for so long. He is ragged and so is she, because she is tired of it all, tired of forever missing him. But she has a duty and she thrives, she must.

The battle ends and they are left in the wreckage. Like always. And they are together, and that is enough.

And if Clarke could tell the future, she would know that in two weeks, Bellamy will go back, and in three weeks, his villagers would come to Camp, bloodied and wet from pouring rain. In two months, the tensions would lift and people of the stars and the ground will mix; their knight, who has made a name for himself, will kiss a woman of the sky. In five months, there will be a rumble in her stomach and in fourteen there will not. In three years she will be shot in the side but stitched back up because that is who she is. In eight years, Bellamy will die, and she will weep for the first time in years. In twelve, she will send her daughter on her first hunt. In eighteen, she will beg for redemption and be granted it. She will tell Raven to be the mother she cannot and tell Jasper that he can lead, even if he doesn’t know it yet. She will be okay with saying goodbye, because she has done what she needs to. She has seen the Earth, breathed real air, swam in water, and fallen in love, time and time again.

But this is all in the future, distant, distant future, and for now, the war is won. Clarke Griffin is happy. And that is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you want more of these (and of course you do duh) you should shoot me an ask at damnmechanics.tumblr.com/ask with a song and fandom. Love to all!


End file.
